Pride, concern or both — What parents feel when their children take on the system for their rights

"There was fear of violence... that the police would resort to laathi-charge," Shefali, a 39-year-old resident of the national capital, explains.

Despite keeping her away from the protest site, Shefali says she uses everyday playground analogies to teach her daughter why people take to the streets.

"We have always taught her to take a stand for herself — starting with small things in class like when someone takes her eraser," she says. "We tell her, 'It's good to be kind, but sometimes you need to take a stand.' With adults, that takes the form of a peaceful protest... She understood the concept when we related it to her classroom environment."

For many parents whose children formed the crowd at Jantar Mantar in the past few weeks, the doubts in Shefali and Ambar’s minds became a lived reality.

The demonstrations — spearheaded by the Cockroach Janata Party and its supporters, against the NEET paper leak scandal which broke out in May, demanding accountability and reforms in the education system — have largely been narrated as the story of Gen Z confronting the state.

But another story, unfolding alongside it, though no less significant, was less visible. It was the story of Indian parents discovering what it means when the children they raised to value honesty and fairness decide that those lessons demand public action.

Many Indian children grow up learning that questioning elders is disrespectful. At home, disagreement is often dismissed as 'badtameezi' (misbehaviour); in classrooms, obedience is rewarded more readily than curiosity. Yet those same children are also taught to stand up for what is right, to oppose injustice, to help those in need and to refuse dishonesty. These lessons coexist comfortably until they collide in real life. What happens when doing the right thing requires questioning authority beyond the home? What happens when the values parents have carefully nurtured lead their children to challenge institutions far more powerful than themselves? The fear extends beyond concerns of immediate danger — laath-charge, arrest — to a lasting potential impact on their future. Will it impact education, job prospects?

For many families, those questions no longer feel theoretical.

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“When my son told me he was going to join the protest at Jantar Mantar, I found that my politics and my fear were at odds,” admits a 54-year-old academic in Uttar Pradesh. “I supported the cause. I was simply afraid of what it might cost me.”

Her anxieties were intensified by the fact that she has already lost her husband. “I lost my husband during the [Covid] pandemic. My son is the only family I have left. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust his judgement; it was that I knew how quickly things could go wrong and how little control any of us would have when they did.”

Reports of violence at the demonstration, she says, sharpened that anxiety rather than created it. “After I heard what happened [a reference to action by the security forces against the protestors during a march to the Parliament], I stopped pretending my worry was irrational,” she says. “I asked him not to go. Not because I thought the movement was wrong, but because I couldn’t survive losing him too.”

Every battle, whether against the system in one’s country or against a foreign power, unfolds in two spaces. In case of a protest such as the one by the students, one occupies the streets, where slogans are raised, speeches delivered and demands pressed. The other plays out inside homes, as parents and other family members wait beside telephones, eyes peeled to television screens for news from ground zero.

And thus behind almost every placard at Jantar Mantar was the story of parents balancing pride with fear, conviction with helplessness.

Following last week’s police action against the demonstrators — there were reports of laathi-charge and even use of pellet guns — some students were quoted as saying that their parents were either unaware of injuries sustained in the protest, or the fact that they were part of the agitation at all.

Across Jantar Mantar, many more such confessions were heard.

Ali (identified by first name only), a student from West Bengal studying in Delhi, told The Federal that his parents had no idea that he had joined the demonstrations. If they eventually learnt about it through social media, he hoped they would understand. "If the news reaches them, maybe they'll understand," he said with a smile. "I would expect them to be more proud because of the hard work we have put in and the victory we have achieved here," he continued, talking about BJP MP Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation as Union education minister, one of the demands of the protestors.

A few metres away, two Class 11 students from the national capital admitted having come to the protest after telling their parents they were going to tuition classes. "Our parents didn't allow us before," one of them explained. "That's why we finally lied at home to be here." Their decision was accompanied by an awareness of the risks involved. Asked whether they are afraid of violence, neither hesitated

"Of course we're scared," one said. "If people start running, we'll run too. Obviously we'll be scared." Then she shrugged almost matter-of-factly. "But it's okay—even if we get hit by two or three lathis, so be it." Why take the risk? "It's important because this is our future," one of the girls said. "If we didn't come, we'd feel guilty.” She spoke quietly about her family's poor finances, about parents who struggled to pay for her education and about the uncertainty that paper leaks introduce into years of preparation.

"If I work so hard and then something like this happens to me in the future, what will I do? What will happen to my family? That's why I'm here," she explained.

As reports of lathi charges, tear gas and pellet guns played out across television channels and social media, communication with the protest site became increasingly unreliable. Protesters described walking hundreds of metres in search of a mobile signal strong enough to send a text message or make a brief phone call. Internet services were patchy, networks frequently collapsed, and batteries drained after hours spent outdoors.

For students inside the protest, the immediate concern was staying connected to the movement. For their families, the silence itself became frightening. Parents who had been promised a call in the afternoon found themselves waiting well into the evening. Every unanswered phone invited fresh speculation. Was the battery dead? Had the network failed again? Or had something gone terribly wrong?

A 20-year-old protester from Bihar, who travelled to Delhi on 20 July, said she stopped speaking to her family altogether after they repeatedly asked her “to come back". "I've blocked my family's phone numbers because I want to stay here." Her parents' fears, she explained, were shaped less by politics than by the fact that she was a young woman alone in a volatile situation. News of violence deepened their anxiety. She understood those fears, she said, but refused to let them dictate her choices.

Invoking Savitribai Phule, she said she wanted future generations to know that when students demanding accountability were beaten, she chose not to look away. "If someone asks me in the future, 'Where were you?' I'll be able to say, 'I was there.'"

For her parents, the question is one of safety. For her, it is one of conscience.

Of course, not every family opposed their children joining the demonstrations. A young protester from Nangloi (Delhi) said her parents knew she was coming to Jantar Mantar and supported her decision. "They said I was doing the right thing by coming here," she recalled. "They've always believed that whatever I do will be the right thing."

Also read: How songs of resistance have bound protestors at Jantar Mantar with generations of past dissenters

Meanwhile, some parents addressed their fears regarding their children’s safety by choosing to stand at Jantar Mantar with them.

A father from Shakurpur (Delhi) told The Federal that he brought his teenage daughter to the agitation because he believed silence posed a greater danger than participation. "We've come so that in the future she can have a bright future," he said. "We've come in complete support, so that such mistakes are not repeated in the future and our children's future is never put at risk."

His daughter, a student of class 12, hopes to sit for competitive examinations herself. She first learnt about the demonstrations not through television but on Instagram. "If I work hard for the whole year and then my paper gets leaked, then of course it will affect me too," she said. "That's why I have come here today. I have come for my rights, so that my future is good."

Her father, a worker in the unorganised sector, admitted that friends had warned him against bringing her after reports of violence at the protest. "If everyone gets scared and sits inside their homes, then how will we fight this?" he recalled replying. "If everyone stays inside their homes out of fear, then nothing will ever change."

Discussions around their dinner table, she explained, often revolved around taxes, democracy and accountability. "We tell him how the government takes our taxes and what the government is accountable for. And when the government fails to do that, then it has to answer to the citizens of the country. Democracy is something we try to explain to him—that India is a democratic country and everybody is accountable within it."

She wanted her son to see those ideas outside the pages of a textbook.

"I wanted to show him what happens when you elect the wrong person as a leader," she said. "As a leader, one has to be really accountable for everything that they do. They have the power, and that brings even more responsibility."

For her, attending the protest was not about introducing a child to confrontation. It was about introducing him to citizenship.

"I brought him here to support the Gen Zs—the massive movement they have created. They have created history," she said. "I brought him here so that he learns that in the future, if there is a fight, he has to support it. He has to stand for a good cause."

Before leaving, her son offered his own assessment of the movement.

Asked what he would like to say to the older students gathered around him, he said, "I just want to say 'thank you'. They're fighting for a better education system for us."

For every parent standing beside a child at the protest, however, there were many others watching from afar, trying to reconcile two instincts that rarely sit comfortably together: the desire to raise principled citizens and the equally powerful desire to keep those citizens safe.

Political psychology offers one way of understanding this tension. Lauren Duncan, the William R. Kenan Jr. professor of psychology at Smith College, has argued that children learn politics not only through formal education but by observing how adults respond to injustice. When parents take their children to demonstrations, they are communicating something larger than a political opinion. They are showing that collective action is one legitimate way of participating in a democracy.

Duncan also notes that young adulthood is a formative period in which people begin reassessing inherited beliefs while developing convictions of their own. Research on earlier generations—from those shaped by the Vietnam War to participants in the American civil rights movement—suggests that political experiences during these years often become central to personal identity. Decades later, people continue to remember not only what happened, but where they stood.

For many of the students at Jantar Mantar, these protests may come to occupy a similar place in memory. Whether or not they produce lasting reforms, they have already become moments through which a generation is beginning to understand itself. The same may be true for their parents.

Inside countless homes, families are confronting questions for which there are no easy answers. How do you encourage a child to stand against injustice while fearing the consequences of doing exactly that? At what point does protecting a child begin to conflict with preparing them for citizenship? These are dilemmas with no universally satisfying resolution and the conversations they have prompted are likely to outlast the protest itself.

At their home in Delhi’s Okhla, meanwhile, Shefali and Ambar are contemplating a future where their daughter might be a part of similar agitations.

"We discussed, 'Zohra will also go to these things in a few years.' And Ambar said, 'Yes, she will go, and we can't stop her because these are the values we're instilling in her.' We have to accept that,” says Shefali. “If tomorrow she participates to assert her rights, we will give her full freedom. In spite of the repercussions and state strictness—we will have to accept that."